parrhesia.substack.com
SS: Americans are rather ignorant about history. Moral reasoning by historical analogy is bad. Historical examples can be misleading for making predictions. These facts suggest that the utility of history courses is overestimated. In fact, they are mostly useless.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
History, even poor history, classes will help at least somewhat against the whole revisionist idea of the past (unless, as seems increasingly the case, the institutions are captured and the ideologues get to set the curriculum where they push their views). Why is "Bridgerton" a fantasy version of Regency England and not realism? Even if there were black and other non-white people living in the UK at the time? Why doesn't it make sense to have Diverse and Inclusive communities in TV shows and movies that are set in the past, or a version of the past, even if those are fantasy? Why isn't it enough to say "This is fantasy, you can accept dragons and magic but not a black elf"? Why is this a fucking dumb thing to say? "It felt only natural to us that an adaptation of Tolkien’s work would reflect what the world actually looks like,” says Lindsey Weber, executive producer of the series."
If all you are getting is the rainbow diversity version of what the past supposedly looked like, then when you eventually come up some instance of how it really was, of course you are going to cry racism and all the other -isms and -phobes. But you are still wrong.
More options
Context Copy link